This page lists the DNS settings that technically advanced customers can use if they run their DNS nameservers elsewhere, but still want Tiger Technologies to host their website.

On this page:

• Limitations
• Are you sure you need to do this?
• DNS entries to add
• Should I add extra records if I’m going to send mail from scripts on the site?
• Can I enter your server IP address as an “A record” at the other company?
• The “zone apex” problem

Limitations

If you do this, please note the following limitations:

• We don’t recommend doing this unless you have experience managing DNS. Most people have us handle their DNS nameservers instead; that way we can always solve any DNS problems for you.
• This works for “http://www.example.com/” and other subdomains of “example.com”. Depending on your DNS provider, it may not work for the top-level “http://example.com/” without “www” (sometimes called a “naked” or “zone apex” hostname) unless you take extra steps (some possibilities are described below).
• We won’t be able to automatically obtain a wildcard Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for your site if you do this; you’ll have to use our control panel to request a certificate for just the hostname(s) you point here.
• This page only explains how to point a website at Tiger Technologies web servers. We have a separate page explaining how to point email at our mail servers if you need it.

Are you sure you need to do this?

A common misconception is that you might need to do this just to keep your email or domain name registration with another company. That’s not the case. We can handle the DNS nameservers even if you:

• Keep the email elsewhere, by adding MX records with us to “point” the mail at the other company (we’ll be happy to add the necessary DNS records for you, and we may have already imported them automatically); and/or
• Leave the domain name registration with another company and use their interface to point the nameservers here.

Also, when the website and email are split between two companies, some people wonder whether it’s better to have the website provider or the email provider handle the DNS. The answer is that although either can work, it usually makes more technical sense to have the website provider do it, because the website provider may need to enter and update IP addresses for A records that can change (see the sections below), whereas the email provider won’t be using raw IP addresses — they’ll be using MX records that can be entered once and then left alone.

DNS entries to add

If you’re okay with the limitations described above, the DNS entries you should create at the other company are:

www.example.com.    CNAME  example.com.customers.tigertech.net.
example.com.        CNAME  example.com.customers.tigertech.net.

If you want to point additional subdomains at our web servers, you should add those in the same way. For example, to point “store.example.com” here, you’d also add:

store.example.com.  CNAME  example.com.customers.tigertech.net.

The special example.com.customers.tigertech.net. CNAME target is guaranteed to always point at the correct IP address of your website with us. Note that it ends with a dot, and that dot is important — be sure to include the dot when you enter it at the other company (although we’ve heard reports that some companies, including GoDaddy, automatically add the dot for you and require that you omit it when typing the hostname).

Should I add extra records if I’m going to send mail from scripts on the site?

If you’re going to send mail from scripts (including WordPress) on your site with us, you should add additional DNS records so that other companies can “authenticate” the mail to verify that it’s legitimate.

If you already have a “TXT” record that begins with “v=spf1”, you should add include:customers.tigertech.net after the “v=spf1” (with a space between them).

If you don’t already have one of those records, add a new one that looks like this:

@   TXT    "v=spf1 include:customers.tigertech.net ?all"

In addition, you should add these two records:

1.tigertech._domainkey  CNAME  1.tigertech.domainkey.tigertech.net.
2.tigertech._domainkey  CNAME  2.tigertech.domainkey.tigertech.net.

Using all three of these DNS records will make sure you can send mail without trouble.

Can I enter your server IP address as an “A record” at the other company?

You can do this reliably if you get a dedicated IP address for your site. If you get a dedicated IP address and then reload this page, it will show you the correct “A record” to use above.

You shouldn’t point an A record at our servers without a dedicated IP address, though. If you use an A record pointing to the default shared IP address, it will appear to work at first, but can stop working when your site’s IP address changes on our servers. Although that doesn’t happen often, it could happen without notice as we grow our network, defend against “denial of service” attacks on certain IP addresses and ranges, and make other changes. (A dedicated IP address makes this much less likely to happen, because we can almost always move the dedicated IP address if we need to move your site, keeping them together.)

The “zone apex” problem

Some DNS providers won’t allow you to enter a CNAME for the top-level example.com hostname that doesn’t include “www” (sometimes called the “naked” or “zone apex” hostname) — they’ll only let you enter an “A record” IP address for that level. But entering an A record that points to a shared IP address would cause the hostname to break in the future if the IP address changes, so that’s not a good solution.

If you need the top-level hostname to work, and your DNS provider doesn’t allow you to enter a CNAME target for “example.com”, you’ll need to solve this problem somehow. Here are some possibilities:

• Get a dedicated IP address on our servers and point an A record at that IP address. If you get a dedicated IP address, we’ll do everything in our power to avoid changing it, and we’ll notify you in the unlikely event it has to change anyway for some reason. (This usually solves the problem because if your site is the only site on that IP address, we can move the dedicated IP address to a new server if we ever need to move your site.)
• Point the A record for example.com at a web server you control, making it redirect all “http://example.com” requests to the “http://www.example.com” CNAME on our servers. You’ll presumably know when your own web server changes IP address, and you can update your DNS A record at the same time. (The “web server you control” could be a redirection service from your DNS company if they provide that; many do.)
• Use a third-party DNS service such as Cloudflare, DNSimple or DNS Made Easy that lets you add a CNAME (or its equivalent) at the top level.